I am so glad Gilly did not go the SEAT route which seems to be the default for the cash strapped VW Golf GTI owner when change is due. Anyway, the Mazda is only a stop-gap measure in his case. As Exonian said, there is a whole (SEATless and possibly VWless) world out there.
SEAT does not always meen cash strapped. I went over to SEATs in 1993 because VW was making wobbly barges(you would have liked the mk3's ride
). Were as SEAT was putting mk3 golf GTI engines into the smaller lighter better suspensioned Ibiza GTIs and creating true mk2 golf GTI successors.
We still have SEATs in the family and apart from ultimate handling i still rate my Mk1 Leons way above my Mk6 GTI im sad to say.
I even testdrove and thought about the current Ibiza cupra when i bought the mk6 GTI as it would have done most things i wanted from a non family car just the complicated engine and DSG put me off . I sometimes think i made the wrong choice
